Jordan had (and still has, as of where I've gotten) a core story
I won't deny it - but it just breaks my span of competence as a reader - I cannot hold a twelve-volume epic in my head, much less a twelve-volume-epic that's published over a decade or longer. From where I'm sitting, it's indistinguishable from 'never going anywhere' - in order for the scale of the story to be graspable, it needs to come in a more condensed package. LOTR isn't exactly a thin book - neither in physical size or scope - and it's a stretch to remember what happened to whom, but I can just about cope.
There's nothing particularly magical about the trilogy approach
Absolutely. I've written a quadrology - the story split perfectly into four, and not into three or five - so it's kind of arbitrary, only it resonates so well with us: beginning, middle, end. I feel that having smaller arcs to follow makes the whole story easier to grasp. I prefer trilogies to long books in three volumes for the same reason: particularly as I get older and have less time to devour a book in one setting, needing to only keep a limited amount of story in my head at any one time makes it easier to follow. (Also, I'm a Gestalt learner. I'm _trying_ to understand the whole in one go.) I like epics, I like the possibilities of working on a large stage, but in WOT I got bogged down in lots of little conflicts that haven't added up yet.
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yati
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Date: 2011-03-06 10:59 am (UTC)I won't deny it - but it just breaks my span of competence as a reader - I cannot hold a twelve-volume epic in my head, much less a twelve-volume-epic that's published over a decade or longer. From where I'm sitting, it's indistinguishable from 'never going anywhere' - in order for the scale of the story to be graspable, it needs to come in a more condensed package. LOTR isn't exactly a thin book - neither in physical size or scope - and it's a stretch to remember what happened to whom, but I can just about cope.
There's nothing particularly magical about the trilogy approach
Absolutely. I've written a quadrology - the story split perfectly into four, and not into three or five - so it's kind of arbitrary, only it resonates so well with us: beginning, middle, end. I feel that having smaller arcs to follow makes the whole story easier to grasp. I prefer trilogies to long books in three volumes for the same reason: particularly as I get older and have less time to devour a book in one setting, needing to only keep a limited amount of story in my head at any one time makes it easier to follow. (Also, I'm a Gestalt learner. I'm _trying_ to understand the whole in one go.) I like epics, I like the possibilities of working on a large stage, but in WOT I got bogged down in lots of little conflicts that haven't added up yet.